Afternoon summary
BMA Scotland has called off a planned strike by junior doctors after the Scottish government offered them a 12.4% pay rise. (See 3.46pm.)
The Scottish government is challenging Westminster to decriminalise all drugs for personal use, in a fresh attempt to tackle Scotland’s chronically high drug death rates.
Murals of cartoon characters, including Mickey Mouse and Baloo from The Jungle Book, painted on the walls of an asylum seeker reception centre to welcome children, have been removed on the orders of the immigration minister, Robert Jenrick.
Keir Starmer has said he and the former senior civil servant Sue Gray knew and followed the rules over her appointment as his chief of staff, but admitted to frustrations at not being able to defend the hiring while it was scrutinised by the Whitehall watchdog.
Starmer has been accused of “wavering on climate commitments” after the Labour party refused to commit to the £11.6bn climate funding pledge made to the world’s poorest nations.
A rightwing lobby group that does not declare its donors is spearheading a campaign to undermine the spread of the four-day week in the UK.
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Priti Patel launches bid to water down Commons motion criticising 7 Johnson loyalists who attacked privileges inquiry
Dame Priti Patel, the former home secretary, is leading an attempt to water down the motion being debated on Monday criticising the MPs who spoke out against the privileges committee’s investigation into Boris Johnson.
Patel is one of seven Tory MPs accused in a recent privileges committee report of trying to undermine its inquiry into Johnson by publicly denouncing it as biased.
On Monday MPs will debate the recent report, and the motion proposed by the committee. Without naming Patel or the other six Tories, it says that when the privileges committee is carrying out an inquiry, MPs “should not impugn the integrity of that committee or its members or attempt to lobby or intimidate those members or to encourage others to do so, since such behaviour undermines the proceedings of the house and is itself capable of being a contempt”.
Patel has tabled an amendment that would remove the reference to impugning the integrity of the committee, or intimidating its members.
Instead, her motion just says that, when the committee is carrying out an inquiry, MPs “should not attempt personally to lobby or intimidate those members or to encourage others to do so, since such behaviour undermines the proceedings of the house and is itself capable of being a contempt”.
No one has accused the seven Tories of trying to personally lobby members of the committee; the accusation is that they maligned them on Twitter, or on the media.
If Patel’s amendment were to pass, it would mean she and her six colleagues would avoid the embarrassment to the Commons voting to implicitly condemn their conduct.
Brendan Clarke-Smith and Dame Andrea Jenkyns, another two of the seven Tories singled out for criticism by the privileges committee, have signed Patel’s amendment. The other four Tories – Nadine Dorries, Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, Mark Jenkinson and Sir Michael Fabricant – have not yet signed it.
Patel, Jenkyns, Rees-Mogg and Fabricant were all included in Johnson’s resignation honours. Dorries was expecting to be included, too, but her peerage was blocked.
Wendy Chamberlain, the Lib Dem MP, has tabled an alternative amendment saying all seven Tories named in the report should face an investigation over claims they committed a contempt of parliament.
It is for the speaker to decide whether amendments are called, and it is possible that he could decide that neither should be put to a vote.
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